RPI wary of Dartmouth in ECAC quarterfinals

Mike McMahon — The Record
RPI forward Brock Higgs scored a hat trick in a game vs. Dartmouth earlier this season. The teams meet in a best-of-three ECAC quarterfinal series, starting tonight at Houston Field House.

J.S. Carras — The Record
RPI forward Jacob LaLiberte leads the Engineers with 18 assists heading into this weekend’s playoff series vs. Dartmouth.

TROY >> It’s that time of the year. The playoffs.

“Best time of the year,” at least one-half dozen Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute players claimed earlier in the week.

The Engineers host Dartmouth tonight and Saturday in the best-of-three preliminary-round series of the ECAC Hockey event at Houston Field House. Should a third game be necessary, it would be Sunday night (7:00 each night).

Rensselaer was the most improved team — by far — in the second half of the 2012-13 season. This year, that award clearly goes to Dartmouth.

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The Big Green spent much of the season in last place, winning two of their first 14 ECACH games (2-11-1). They went 5-2-1 since and finished 10th in the 12-team ECACH with a 7-13-2 record (8-17-4 overall).

Rensselaer (14-14-6 overall) is the seventh-place team with a 8-9-5 league mark.

Early in the season — Dartmouth’s fourth game — the Engineers went into Thompson Arena and routed the Big Green, 7-1, sparked by a hat trick from Brock Higgs and one goal, two assists each by Ryan Haggerty and Matt Neal.

Then on Jan. 24, the Engineers completed the regular-season sweep with a 4-2 decision at HFH. That game was much tighter.

“The second game was 3-2, with an empty-netter (by Mike Zalewski in the closing seconds),” Rensselaer coach Seth Appert said. “So, that was a dogfight.”

After that game, the Big Green were blown out by Quinnipiac, 8-1. Since then, they are 5-2-1.

“They’re playing their best hockey of the season,” Appert said. “I think we’re playing some of our best hockey of the season. Certainly, over the past eight games, they look like a real good hockey team, like I’ve always thought they would be. They have a good group of forwards, big, fast and talented up front.”

Further, Dartmouth has tightened up its defense dramatically.

Excluding Zalewski’s empty-netter, RPI put just 44 shots on the Dartmouth net in two games and scored 10 goals.

The bad news is, Dartmouth, after allowing 84 goals in its first 21 games, has permitted just 14 over the final eight. The Big Green are 5-2-1 in those eight games.

“They’re a good hockey team,” Appert reiterated. “They went on the road to Colgate-Cornell — everybody knows how hard that trip is — two teams fighting to make the national tournament — and they split, and probably had the better (scoring) chances against Colgate (a 2-1 loss).”

Goalie Charlie Grant and the Big Green shut out Cornell, 1-0, the previous night. He didn’t play in either RPI game this season.

The Big Green finished 4-6-1 on the road in ECACH play and 5-9-3 overall.

Tonight will mark the college playoffs debut for RPI junior goalie Scott Diebold.

He’s not nervous.

“Maybe a little pre-game jitters,” he said. But I imagine they won’t be playing anything other than hockey in the playoffs; they’re not playing foosball, something I’m not familiar with. I’m not going to change anything. Like I’ve said all year, I’m just playing some hockey, just competing.”

Some RPI players think the Engineers can draw from the two victories over Dartmouth, others disagree.

“I don’t think so,” assistant captain Johnny Rogic said.

“No, not really,” said senior defenseman Guy Leboeuf. “It’s the playoffs and everything’s different. It’s a good feeling but we can’t dwell on that.”

“I’m not sure,” said team captain Matt Tinordi. “Obviously, beating them twice is better than losing to them twice but they’re season’s on the line just as our is, so they’re going to be as desperate as we need to be and we have to be ready.”

“It gives us confidence,” Diebold said, “but in the playoffs, anything can happen.”

Assistant captain Higgs said, “we can take some confidence from it, I guess, but I don’t know if it’s an advantage.”

The Engineers remember their medium level of tenacity in Game 1 against Brown last season. They lost, 3-1 and lost the series, 2-1.

“We came out flat in the first game,” said junior winger Mark McGowan, “and it cost us, no matter how well we played in the other two games. We’re looking to come out and have a good start this year.”

“We just didn’t have a bite, an edge,” Appert said, “and we played catch-up the rest of the series. We need to come out (tonight) in an attacking mindset and not feel our way through the first period.”

Both teams have had injuries and other adversity this season and Appert says it’s important to incorporate that into their preparation.

“The teams that win in the playoffs will take the lessons they’ve learned through a challenging season, through the ups-and-downs and the grind of a college hockey season — we have a long season, the longest of any NCAA sport. The teams that win in the playoffs will be excited and energetic about the playoffs and the challenge ahead but will also be mindful of the lessons they’ve learned through the season and making sure they apply those lessons into the games this weekend.”

And Appert, in explaining RPI’s 2 games to 1 playoff victory at Dartmouth in the 2009 playoffs, outlined the basic formula for playoff success.

“We played well that weekend,” he said. “We played good defense, tenacious, blocked shots, got good goaltending.

“It’s pretty simple,” he stated. “It really is. We’re a unique sport. Anybody who follows this sport at all, knows how you win in the playoffs. And it’s no different (from) high school to the NHL. The teams that have a higher commitment to doing little things ... blocking shots, backchecking, finishing checks, making good puck decisions, getting pucks deep instead of turning pucks over in the neutral zone; the team that’ll do that at a higher level than their opponent — wins in playoff higher. So, we have to do that with a higher commitment than Dartmouth.”